


Surveil - Or, The Adventure Of The Trailing Detective

by iriswallpaper



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Disguised Sherlock, Drug Dealing, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen, How Sherlock came to be in the crack house, Outtakes, POV First Person, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock follows John, Sherlock-centric, off screen sceen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8749957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswallpaper/pseuds/iriswallpaper
Summary: How Sherlock came to be in the crack house when John went to fetch Isaac Whitney. Or, The Adventure Of The Trailing Detective.sur·veil  - sərˈvāl/. verb. Origin: US1. to keep (a person or place) under surveillance.





	

_Sherlock doesn’t follow me everywhere_. John had said it to Irene Adler, in the abandoned power plant, when I’d followed him there. Of course I followed him - I actually did follow him everywhere in those days. Well, nearly everywhere. There had been a few times I’d been otherwise engaged with the Met or my brother - so it would be more precise to say I followed John Watson nearly everywhere.

Then came the day he’d left me at Bart’s Hospital. He’d taken the bait, believed that Mrs. Hudson was shot, called me a machine then stormed out to check on her. I didn’t follow him that day - I had a date with the Devil on the roof of the hospital instead.

I followed him some during the two years that followed, before I left London for the four corners of the Earth.

And oh, how I wish I’d taken up following him again immediately upon my return to London! What a lot of pain that would have saved the both of us. Instead, I chose to surprise him (and crash his marriage proposal) and ended up with a bruised windpipe and a nasty lump on the back of my head.

After that, I took up following him nearly full-time. I tried talking to him a few times, when I found an opportunity that felt right: at the newsstand while he bought a paper, at the door of the new surgery where he worked while I was gone. I’d even followed him unnoticed onto a bus, taken the seat behind him and leaned over to talk to him after the bus was in motion, thinking I had several miles worth of bus ride to achieve his forgiveness. But no, he’d (once again) told me to fuck off, pulled the signal cord and rushed out of his seat to stand by the rear door with his back to me, shoulders furiously bunched up nearly as high as his ears. The driver stopped at the next corner and John got off without a backward glance. I judged it prudent to stay put for at least one more stop. I could backtrack and pick up his trail. From the window as the bus pulled away, I saw him standing on the pavement in the rain with an angry set to his jaw, looking anywhere but at me.

Eventually he’d forgiven me. Of course he did, I was like a drug to him - he said so on his blog.

His wedding took up considerable time, then he and his wife left for their sex holiday and I had nothing to do. When they arrived home he seemed more and more preoccupied with his wife and their ‘couple friends’ from the boring suburb where they lived. So I followed him.

Weeks of trailing him through his dull routine - work, home, a few nights out with his wife and new friends. I began to wonder why I even bothered. I was as bored surveilling his activities as he looked while enduring them. The less he answered my calls and texts, the more I followed him.

He’d responded less and less to my texts until eventually, a month went by with no word from him.

Surveilling him at home was trickier. The boring suburban street where he and his wife lived offered little cover. Townhomes lined both sides of the block with tiny front gardens that left little room for cover. I called on every trick in my book of disguises. In my weeks of surveilling his flat, waiting for him to leave for some tedious activity or another, I played a paperboy, street sweeper, door-to-door pollster, garbage man, meter reader, foot patrol police officer, building contractor, buried utility marker - that one had been fun, marking the street and pavement randomly with a can of orange spray paint. I also crouched in the bushes in his neighbor’s back gardens after they’d left for work.

The morning I watched his neighbor bang on their door, I had been impersonating a runner in loose track pants, layered loose sweatshirts and trainers, earbuds seated in my ears but no actual music playing on my phone, jogging slowly down their street, up their alley, then a few block in either direction and back again.

Thank God I was jogging their street when their upstairs neighbor Kate went knocking. Kate, whose son Isaac had a major drug problem. I deduced Kate’s intent by her hunched shoulders, streaming eyes and loud sniffles. Isaac was at the crack pipe again - or the needle, or pills. For so young a man with all the advantages of a suburban lifestyle and loving family, Isaac had a surprisingly wide repertoire of chemical escape preferences; it had been impossible not to notice during the weeks I’d spent watching their building. I knew where he’d been headed the previous night as I watched him leave his flat from where I sat in the front seat of a parked car I’d found unlocked half a block away. He and I had a mutual acquaintance whom he’d obviously been headed to see.

I decided to head off to Isaac’s destination since it Kate obviously intended to ask John and Mary to help find her son. John would take Mary’s car, so I had no time to lose. Running in earnest now, I cut through gardens and sped down alleys. My path would be half the distance John would travel by car, but time was still of the essence.

I arrived winded but my ‘mate’ Billy Wiggins knew me well so he didn’t demand that week’s entry password. Billy knew what I liked without my asking, which sped things along nicely. He also knew exactly where Isaac was sleeping off his night’s high. I told Billy to stall the well groomed, short man with graying hair who would be showing up at the door in the next few minutes.

I took the cellophane bag Billy offered and sprinted up the stairs.

Thankfully the mattress next to Isaac was unoccupied. I sat down on it and looked around. I needed to be flying sufficiently high by the time John arrived to convince him that I’d just happened to flop on the mattress next to his neighbor's son. There wasn’t time to prepare a hypodermic - John would most likely be here any minute, if I knew his strong moral principles. He’d help Kate, of course he would, and that meant he’d be checking the place mattress-to-mattress any minute. The filthy room offered no supplies for proper snorting so I scooped up enough of the powder to give me a short high on the tip of my little finger and inhaled sharply in my left nostril, then another scoop and snort in the right.

God how I hated to toot but needs must. It was so _common_. I hated the searing sting in my nose and the bitter taste in the back of my throat. But the bump hit almost immediately - that made it all right.

I needed to look like I’d spent the night in the doss house so I swiped my palms over the dirty floor and scrubbed them over my face and neck, then wrung them together. My hands looked convincingly grimy and since I didn’t have a mirror to check, I’d have to trust that my face did, too. I wiped my hands over the floor again and ran them through my hair, scrubbing roughly to make knots and mat it together. Then I pulled up the hood on my loose sweatshirt and curled up on the disgusting mattress to wait. I bit at my lips and scrubbed them with the back of my hand to chap the thin skin. I also pinched the skin on my inner arms - _hard_ \- to bring tears to my eyes to make them redden, then wiped the tears away with the now-grimy cuff of my hoodie.

Calming my slightly-rapid breathing so I could listen intently, I heard Billy Wiggins and John exchange words at the door. Then a scuffle and finally John’s footsteps on the stairs. I held my breath as his footfalls rang on the bare wood floor, coming closer to the mattress where I lay hiding my face behind the hood.

I heard rustling - John obviously helped Isaac to sit up. They spoke quietly but I heard every word. Finally the right moment came and I rolled over, pushed the hood from my head and spoke.  
             “Hello, John. Did you come for me, too?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [ arianedevere ](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/67234.html)for the Sherlock episode transcripts! They are a true treasure to the Sherlock fandom.


End file.
